Fungi can be detrimental to many different facets of life. For example, fungi (e.g., mildew or mold) can negatively affect aesthetics or human living conditions, e.g., through degradation/deterioration of material, through contamination, by making material, e.g., wood, appear undesirable, or through production of undesirable toxins.
In the past 10 years, there have increasing reports of fungal (mold) infection epidemics killing off a high percentage of many animals. Such animals devastated by recent mold epidemics include animals as diverse as bats, frogs and bees. For example, bats play a very important role in the ecosystem since they pollinate many cultivated and wild plants and eat large quantities of mosquitoes and other harmful insects. The fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans (formerly Geomyces destructans) has been estimated to have killed at least 5.7 to 6.7 million hibernating bats in the eastern US and southeastern Canada. The infection is also known as “white nose syndrome”. The P. destructans fungus invades the skin, disrupts several physiological functions in the bat and causes death. Some species of bats are now threatened with extinction due to this infection. For example, the little brown bat (Mytosis lucifugus) has suffered a 91% hibernating mortality over a single winter.
Honey bees are indispensable to U.S. agriculture, yet their future and the future of the dependent agricultural economies are in peril. The apiculture industry continues to battle the accelerating rate of decline in the health and number of honey bee colonies. One of the causes for this colony collapse is Chalkbrood (Ascosphaera apis) and Stonebrood (Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus, and Aspergillus niger) fungal disease.
Fungi also cause a wide variety of diseases in humans. Some fungi cause infections limited to the outermost layers of the skin and hair (superficial mycoses), other fungi cause cutaneous mycoses by penetrating to the keratinized layers of the skin, hair and nails and triggering pathologic changes in the host. Subcutaneous mycoses cause infections in the dermis, subcutaneous tissues, muscle and fascia and are often chronic. Systemic mycoses typically originate primarily in the lung and from there may cause secondary infections in other organ systems in the body. Patients with immune system deficiencies are often prone to opportunistic mycoses.
There is a need in the art for improved treatment options for human and animals affected by fungal infections. Many of the agents currently used in treating mycotic infections are extremely toxic, causing significant problems/issues with the health and wellbeing of the host. There is a great need for fungal control agents that do not by themselves represent a health hazard to the host taking the anti-fungal. The use of a biologically derived control agent that does not pose a risk to the infected host would represent a significant improvement.